The discussion of multicultural education in teacher preparation dates back several decades. "The historical roots of multicultural education lie in the civil rights movements of various historically oppressed groups" (Gorski, 1999, p.1). As communities of color resisted institutional racism, schools became one of the sites of struggle. Thus, the…

In this paper, the author seeks to initiate a conversation about the discomfort that can emerge and the violence that might possibly take place in the "critical", dialogic, and justice-oriented Foundations of Education classroom between students and instructors when all are invited to negotiate "the necessary conditions" for learning. Believing…

Teacher quality has been a central issue in discourse on improvement of schooling outcomes. While the importance of teacher quality is widely acknowledged, there is considerable dispute regarding necessary skills, knowledge, and dispositions of a highly qualified teacher, as well as the methods for producing such teachers. Indeed, even the…

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann's (2000) "An Elusive Science" provides the most comprehensive history of education as a field of academic study. As such it is important for those in the education community to read and reflect upon the text in order to take stock of the field. Foundations scholars who read Lagemann's work may be struck by a stark irony,…

Throughout the history of public schooling in the United States, maintaining democracy has been cited as one of the fundamental justifications for public support for schools. The pioneers of public education--among them Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, and John Dewey--argued that schools were, in fact, essential to the health and well-being of the…

The aim of this paper is to call attention to the missing discourse of non-humans as social actors in the Social Foundations of Education. The paper outlines three common figuring metaphors that impede the adoption of such a theoretical discourse and shows how Actor-Network Theory (ANT), more recently developed in the nascent field of Science and…

In this article, the author discusses the characteristics that are found in "democratic" schools, the importance of this type of school, and what Social Foundation teacher educators can do to support the development of teachers who are attuned to and grounded in an education for democracy. She contends that Social Foundations teacher educators…

Having worked and learned together, and shared many conversations about common goals and assumptions that guide their teaching and learning, the authors seek to construct a collaborative research project that will investigate how they were acting on, and building on, their shared pedagogical and political beliefs. In this article, they address the…

In a 1974 essay entitled "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire," Rabbi Irving Greenberg offered the "working principle"--no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children--in response to Christian silence during the Holocaust and as a kind of moral plumb line by which post-Shoah…

Introduces a theme issue which examines specific professional preparation programs in field-based sites as well as student experiences in those programs. Each paper critically examines how revised social foundations standards inform and are evident in these programs. The papers all describe particular practices situated in specific programmatic…

Explores how social foundations might inform the core required educational psychology course in teacher education, describing undergraduate students' common perceptions of social foundations as required but insignificant, illustrating how this might occur in educational psychology as students are engaged in the normative and critical perspectives…

Describes a 5th-year teacher education program created by social foundations faculty in partnership with inner city schools, arguing that as state and national movements favor broader performance-based standards over social foundations, social foundations faculty cannot rely on state regulations to safeguard their courses. The partnership…

Describes a site-based, rural teacher education program for Navajo students (the Pinon Partnership Program) which infused foundations throughout the program and used the Council of Learned Societies in Education's (CLSE) Social Foundations standards as its framework. Specific examples of how the six CLSE principles played out in the author's…

Traces the development, by foundations faculty, of a Master of Education program, based in social foundations content and knowledge, discussing successes, tensions, and dilemmas they faced and explaining how foundational perspectives shaped the content of the curriculum they developed and how their perspectives illuminated the processes by which…

Demonstrates how social foundations and curriculum and instruction scholars collaborated on a professional development project for inservice teachers, describing a summer institute designed to facilitate teaching for diversity. The paper discusses themes resulting from an action research project that examined patterns of teacher talk, particularly…